Worker Drug Tests:

Whose Business Is It?

June 29, 1986|By James Warren.

The employees of a mid-sized, north suburban manufacturing firm were rudely surprised recently. They showed up one morning and were given lie-detector tests. Their employer was convinced drug use was rampant.

A week later, the company pulled another shocker, demanding urine samples to discern traces of drugs. Combining the polygraph results and the urinalyses, it fired a dozen people.

The action highlights one of the nation`s most significant and rapidly-emerging workplace issues: drug testing of employees. No surprise, it is generating impassioned debate among employers, worker representatives and civil libertarians.

Some see testing as a justified management response to poor work performance, absenteeism, misconduct and industrial accidents. There are estimates that one of 10 workers is impaired at work by either drugs or alcohol, and that American industry may lose $40 billion to $60 billion a year due to drug-related absenteeism.

Others view testing as an insidious assault on privacy, aided by suspect technology, which can degrade workers and is destined to provoke substantial litigation.

What is undisputed is that testing is growing rapidly, touching blue-collar, white-collar and ``new-collar`` workers, like health technicians, and may be the hottest workplace issue in years.

About 30 percent of the Fortune 500, including Ford Motor Co., Exxon and IBM, reportedly test job applicants, up from only 10 percent three or four years ago, while perhaps 20 percent of all employers engage in some testing of current employees.

``Testing is an epidemic and, unless intelligent restrictions are placed on it, employers will test at a drop of a hat,`` said Sherman Carmell, a labor attorney.

``I`m seeing a surge of questions. It`s perhaps the hottest issue I`ve seen and I`ve been practicing for 44 years,`` said Lee Burkey, a lawyer who represents unions and worries about invasions of privacy.

Chicago`s Seyfarth Shaw Fairweather & Geraldson, the nation`s largest management law firm, confronts a swell of similar queries, said partner R. Theodore Clark, who finds that employers have an ``increasing awareness that drug abuse has an adverse impact on productivity, theft and other issues.``

He`s convinced that employers` heightened sensitivity partly stems from the high-profile drug problems, mostly involving cocaine, of professional athletes and the publicity given to a recommendation by the President`s Commission on Organized Crime that workers be randomly tested.

Drug testing does not reflect a growing problem as much as a new awareness. Experts say the level of drug and alcohol abuse has not grown in the last 10 to 15 years, and alcohol abuse remains a far greater problem than drugs.

Most current drug testing involves job applicants and, many employers say, is merely one of many variables in the selection process. However, Ken Fox, a drug and alcohol specialist for Grant Hospital who counsels dozens of Chicago employers, said that 75 percent automatically eliminate any applicant who tests positive.

``By automatically dropping people, I think many employers . . . may well be losing a potentially valuable employee, especially since the drug tests may be dubious,`` Fox said.

Testing of workers already on the payroll usually results either from specific accidents or ``fitness for duty`` checks prompted by an employer`s suspicion that a person is exhibiting erratic, drug-related behavior.

Some mandatory, random testing of workforces does exist. Such testing has been legally challenged, and upheld, for some public sector employers, like the military, but there have been no court decisions on private sector random testing.

Many employers are loathe to admit random testing, Fox said, but it`s known that it takes place at some chemical, petroleum and nuclear power plants, where dangerous tasks are performed daily. Beside the military, testing also is done on civilian public safety workers, like police and firefighters, and in the transportation industry, including employees of some bus companies hired by the Chicago Board of Education.

Practically, private employers whose workers are not unionized have the greatest leeway in imposing tests. Their use of tests for pre-employment screening is virtually unfettered. Unionized firms must act more gingerly and bring the issue to the bargaining table, and more are doing so.

The State of Illinois called for random testing during bargaining this year with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees

(AFSCME). According to Steven Culen, AFSCME`s Illinois director, the union balked, convinced that abuses of civil liberties loomed. The proposal was withdrawn.

But even unionized employers with testing plans, like the Chicago Transit Authority, encounter confusion. For example, the CTA has just been involved in two drug-related union grievances in which arbitrators made conflicting awards.